Do you visually indicate when a link is external?

When creating links, you should follow a few basic rules:

• If your link is an internal link, then it should keep the default behaviour, navigating within the same tab
• If the link is external, it should:
  • Open in a new tab
  • Be visually clear to the user that it will lead them away from the current site, that way it is not a surprise.

❌ Figure: Bad example - Without visual indication

✅ Figure: Good example - With visual indication

How to add the external link indicator?

It should be inserted by CSS as following:

a[href*="//"]:not([href*="mysite.com"]):after {
content: url(https://www.ssw.com.au/ssw/images/external.gif);
padding-left: 4px;
}

Figure: Icon can be added via CSS using a simple declaration